Wilmot MacDonald - Dear Old Skibbereen (062-02)
The Old Skivareen (Dear Old Skibbereen) See "Dear Old Skibbereen" Irish Song About the Famine (-Denis Noel's note) This song is sung a cappella. The song is about a man who could not pay his notes (bills?) and so he was driven out and away from old Skibbereen. The song is sung as a story being told by a Father to his son. The son then vows that he will have revenge. The son in the song mentions the Irish boys and the Father mentions his shamrock and shillelagh of his boyhood. When Wilmot clears his throat, the audience laughs, and Wilmot chuckles. It sounds like Wilmot sings Skibbereen most of the time. This song appears elsewhere in the Manny collection as (065-03) where it is again sung by Wilmot MacDonald. 1965 This Irish famine song about a village in Ireland has a good amount of history surrounding it. As the Wikipedia entry for the village describes: Skibbereen is also the name of a song about the Famine, and the impact it and the British Government had on the people of Ireland. The song, known as Dear Old Skibbereen, takes the form of a conversation between a father and a son, in which the son asks his father why he fled the land he loved so well. The father relates to his son how the famine ruined his farm in Skibbereen, and killed his wife. As the man was unable to pay taxes, ...the landlord and the bailiff came to drive us all away. They set the roof on fire with their cursed English flame, And that's another reason why I left old Skibbereen. Site of Famine Burial Pits at Abbeystrowery In the final verse the son swears he will return to Skibbereen to take vengeance on the government that he holds accountable. A version can be found on the soundtrack to the PBS mini-series, "The Long Journey Home," performed by Sinéad O'Connor. In the film Michael Collins, Michael Collins, played by Liam Neeson, sings the song. There are also versions by The Dubliners and the Wolfe Tones. Skibbereen has not forgotten the victims of the Great Famine. A permanent exhibition at the Skibbereen Heritage Centre commemorates that tragic period in Irish history. Skibbereen was the focal point of Ireland's first National Famine Memorial Day on 17 May 2009. The town was selected as it was in one of the areas worst affected by the Great Famine, with a mass grave at Abbeystrewery containing the remains of between 8,000 and 10,000 people. The song's Roud number is 2312 and there are many versions to compare it with here - published/recorded versions are plentiful back to at least 1940, and they've been collected everywhere from Ontario, to Maine, to New Brunswick, Ireland, Wales, and likely elsewhere. Fred McCormick of MusTrad.co.uk has written of this song: The anti-landlord theme in Skibbereen is anything but oblique. Like The Rocks of Bawn, this desperate story of eviction and famine and ultimate revenge would have gone down well with Joe's workmates in 1950s London. It is questionable though whether Skibbereen could have been part of his Carna inheritance, for it was far more popular with showbands and ballad groups than with Irish country singers. Famine songs generally did not survive among rural Irish singers, and Joe seems to be the only such individual who has ever been recorded singing this one. Indeed, it is something of a surprise to find that the song has been turned up more frequently among Canadian singers. The author of Skibbereen is unknown, but its style and content are typical of compositions by nineteenth century middle class radicals. Many such writers were members of the Young Ireland Movement, and their compositions were frequently published in The Nation, a radical journal which included John Mitchel among its staff. Mitchel was eventually transported to the penal colonies for seditious libel, and the ballad which bears his name is suitably seditious and radical. 062-02